In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin

Today’s travel book recommendation comes from Matador community member Sarah Menkedick

My favorite travel book of all time would have to be Bruce Chatwin‘s In Patagonia. I love Chatwin’s understated, quiet writing style…he’s the type of writer that makes you hear the silences, feel the solitude of being alone on the road.

And yet, at the same time, he draws out the particularities of a place and its people.

In Patagonia is one of the few travel books I’ve read while actually traveling through the place being described…and the descriptions were so spot on, and so poignant, that it felt like I couldn’t decide which was more real, the landscape or the book.

Chatwin manages to make his writing very real and very simple; no exaggerated descriptions or depictions of local characters.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t capture some of the oddities one finds traveling – Welsh roses and tea in Patagonia, for example – but he explores them with such respect that it leaves you with this sense of very quiet awe.

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